Living a Life of Gratitude, by Sara Wiseman

Body, Mind & Spirit / Inspiration & Personal Growth “In this revealing book, Sara Wiseman helps us recall, appreciate, and integrate our own life’s journey from a place of gratitude, aware of the blessings and growth in all situations and experiences.”

—Madisyn Taylor, co-founder of DailyOM.com

“ . . . simple guidelines for experiencing a more peaceful and joyful life.”

,

—Dr. Steven Farmer, author of Earth Magic

In the moment that we give thanks everything changes . . .

. . . Our hearts crack open. We are flooded with love. And in that exact instant, we shift to an awareness that is positive, joyous, and brimming.

Sharing uplifting stories that travel from the beginnings of life to the end, Living a Life of Gratitude shows you how to open your heart to a journey of reflection that will help you slow down and appreciate life for what it is.

Whether you use it as a source for discovering inspiration or for strength in times of struggle, this book is a guide to finding light and love, even when you least expect it.

Sara Wiseman is an author, spiritual teacher, and intuitive who has taught thousands of students to create a direct connection to the divine through her many books, courses, radio shows, podcasts, and private sessions. She writes regularly for DailyOM. Sara lives in Oregon. Visit her website at www.sarawiseman.com.

“I love the way this book reads . . . Sara Wiseman brings us into the core.”

—Penney Peirce, author of Frequency

“A beautifully written infusion of inspiration, joy, and (of course) gratitude.”

—Tess Whitehurst, author of The Good Energy Book

$16.99 US / $19.50 CAN ISBN 978-0-7387-3753-9

www.llewellyn.com • Facebook.com/LlewellynBooks • Twitter:@LlewellynBooks

Praise for Living a Life of Gratitude “Sara taps into the music of the spheres and offers it to us in short, simple stories filled with high-energy and a purity of spirit that makes the soul sing … Highly recommended!”

—Debra Moffitt, author of Garden of Bliss “Every minute of our lives is a gift, even on the days that this seems hard to remember. Each of these 88 gratitude stories helps us recall what it means to be fully present in the world.”

—Margaret Ann Lembo, author of Chakra Awakening “This book is a daily dose of healing medicine for your soul.

Sharing personal stories and insights from her own life, stories that will melt the crust of worry from your heart and open you to the Divine, Sara Wiseman provides comforting guidance and wisdom. With tales of daily life, of relationship, of delightful everyday miracles, she offers you a glimpse into your own heart, opportunities for the growth of your own soul that come from a life lived with gratitude. I’m grateful she created this lovely book!”

—Jane Peterson, PhD, Executive Director of The Human Systems Institute

“Gratitude is a way of being—a way of living and looking at the world. Sara Wiseman shows us this over and over again, in these 88 warm, funny, richly textured stories. Heartopening, inspiring and often moving, this book will wake you up and remind you of the true blessings of your life.”

—Rita Mills, Publisher of The New Era Times

Living a Life of

Gratitude

© Cherie Renae Studios

About the Author Spiritual teacher and intuitive Sara Wiseman (Oregon) is the author of Writing the Divine: How to Use Channeling for Soul Growth & Healing, Your Psychic Child: How to Raise Intuitive & Spiritually Gifted Kids of All Ages, and Becoming Your Best Self: The Guide to Clarity, Inspiration and Joy, all published with Llewellyn.

A branding expert for decades, she writes the “Trending Now” column for Retailing Insight (formerly New Age Retailer) and is a regular contributor to DailyOm. Previously a top national copywriter and features journalist, her articles on wellness, lifestyle, spirituality, and psychic development have appeared in numerous publications across the country, as well as online.

Wiseman is also an award-winning singer/songwriter for the band Martyrs of Sound, and hosts the call-in radio show “Ask Sara” on Contact Talk Radio. She offers private intuitive consults and training, and has worked with thousands of clients worldwide.

You can visit her website at www.sarawiseman.com.

Living a Life of

Gratitude Your Journey to Grace, Joy & Healing

Sara Wiseman Llewellyn Publications Woodbury, Minnesota

Living a Life of Gratitude: Your Journey to Grace, Joy & Healing © 2013 by Sara Wiseman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Edition First Printing, 2013 Book design by Bob Gaul Cover design by Lisa Novak Cover art: Background © iStockphoto.com/Oksana Pasishnychenko Part page art: Background © iStockphoto.com/Oksana Pasishnychenko Llewellyn Publications is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending) 978-0-7387-37539 Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business transactions between our authors and the public.

All mail addressed to the author is forwarded but the publisher cannot, unless specifically instructed by the author, give out an address or phone number.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific location will continue to be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to authors’ websites and other sources.

Llewellyn Publications A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.llewellyn.com Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

If you already know how to live with a grateful heart, this book honors you. If you are in the process of learning how to live this way, well … this book is wholly and completely dedicated to you, and to all of us who accompany you on the journey.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the beautiful souls who showed up as miracles during the writing of this book: the listeners of my radio show who sent their love from all over the world; the many folks who emailed me with their experiences and kind words; the very perceptive folks at Llewellyn; Dr. Steve Koc; and my children.

Contents

Introduction 1

Part One: Birth 1. There is only one entrance 7 2. Mother is the first Beloved 11 3. Father is the first teacher 15 4. Noticing the particulate 19 5. Becoming the I am 23 6. The beauty of your true self shines 27

Part Two: Emergence 7. What is your calling? 33 8. Who am I? 37 9. Be your own platypus 41

10. Finding our true skin 45 11. Tethered 47 12. Exhilaration 51 13. Your future self awaits 55 14. Bloom when you’re ready 59

Part Three: Connection 15. Portal of miracles 63 16. The red thread 67 17. At table 71 18. The karma of pie 73 19. What a soul needs to do 77 20. Tenderheart 81 21. Walking the tightrope 85 22. Catching beauty 89

Part Four: Love 23. We hear with our skin 95 24. True loves 97 25. Coming home 101 26. Becoming luminous 105 27. The gift of sex 109

x Contents

28. The shedding of skins 113 29. The feast 115 30. Swing step 117

Part Five: Convergence 31. A simple slice of pizza 123 32. The young saint 127 33. Snow day 131 34. The energy of loving kindness 135 35. With bells on 139 36. The granting of all wishes 143 37. You are here 145 38. Brown-black dog 149

Part Six: Expansion 39. Speaking our truth 155 40. Age of anxiety 159 41. Tenacity 163 42. Saying yes 167 43. Saying no 171 44. Stacking stones 175 45. Wake-up call 179

Contents xi

Part Seven: Nature 46. Meeting the redwoods 185 47. The Universe is singing 189 48. Aurora Borealis 191 49. The soul sings 193 50. The magical variety 195 51. The love of animals 197 52. Crossing the stream 201 53. Breathing light 205 54. The music of sunset 207

Part Eight: Awareness 55. Lock into the hum 211 56. A single drop of water 213 57. The secret life of plants 217 58. The air is not empty 219 59. Three Buddhas 221 60. In the moment of noticing 225 61. Out of body 229 62. Abundance is always present 235 63. Holding space 239

xii Contents

Part Nine: Awakening 64. Electrons, consciousness, soul 245 65. Prayer to the sun 249 66. The raga of plants 253 67. Medium awakened 257 68. Kundalini rising 261 69. Spontaneous Buddha 265 70. Dreamtime 269 71. The container of our lives 273

Part Ten: Presence 72. Lending a hand 279 73. The unending cycle 281 74. Rest stop 283 75. Miracle glasses 287 76. Heaven’s ledger 291 77. Angels in the road 295 78. I see you 299 79. Prayer Flags 303

Contents xiii

Part Eleven: Transition 80. An ordinary day 309

81. Beyond the veil 313 82. Homecoming 317 83. Mary’s song 321 84. Birthing into death 325 85. The container is the mystery 331 86. The feast of everything 333 87. My father’s gift 337 88. The moment is now 343

Part Twelve: Birth Epilogue: There is only one entrance 351 Bibliography 355

xiv Contents

Introduction

In the moment we give thanks, everything changes.

Our hearts crack open. We are flooded with love and light. And in that exact instant, we shift from our negative state to an awareness that is positive, joyous and brimming with bliss—we experience the Divine healing that is our birthright.

The trick is to learn how to create this moment not just once in our lifetimes, but over and over again.

The secret is found in gratitude—in the surrender to the grateful heart, the open heart, the heart that willingly walks in the magic and the mystery—not just for a moment or moments, but at all times.

In essence, to become grateful is to become Divine. It’s a life’s journey, walked step by step, on the path that unfolds before us.

Now, it all sounds fantastic, wonderful, amazing—except that at first, most of us aren’t very good at being grateful. We’re rusty. We’re resistant. We’ve forgotten how to live in wonder and awe. Even as we

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commit to a gratitude practice, we get off track, we backslide, we slip into our habits of negativity and blame … and oh yes, we struggle!

Most of us would agree that it’s not always easy to choose gratitude. Yet with perseverance, gently coming back to this place of thanks over and over again, something begins to change inside us, and we begin to move toward the light, like a flower turning to the sun.

And as we continue and simply keep going—whether it takes us days or weeks or months or years—our practice becomes second nature, until a kind of tipping point is reached, and we begin to live in this state of appreciation not just daily, but hourly, even minute to minute.

In other words, we begin to experience gratitude as our present reality.

This is possible for anyone, no matter what the starting point. For when we slow down enough to really become present in our lives— even if it’s just for a few minutes a day—gratitude begins to open in our hearts. At first it’s a tiny sliver, and then a cascade of healing light, until we can literally feel the energy pouring into our lives, infusing and illuminating everything that we know and that we do not know.

My journey to gratitude My own journey to gratitude has been a life’s progression, but was punctuated by a near death experience in 2008, during which I experienced a sudden and unexpected spiritual awakening accompanied by psychic opening. Since that time, I’ve shared my understanding and

2 Introduction

teachings with tens of thousands of people via my books, radio shows, and consults.

During the year that I wrote this book, my journey to gratitude was expanded yet again, when I had a second brush with death due to cancer. Thankfully, I am a survivor, but this experience shook me to the core, stripped away old beliefs and attachments, and ultimately deepened my spiritual understanding to a level that I would never have arrived at on my own.

So many of us have suffered in these ways: the trauma of grave or difficult experiences that lead us to greater understanding and opening of the heart. These challenges are not easy to deal with, but the rewards are many, if you choose to perceive them this way.

While I didn’t expect to be experiencing my own mortality while writing this book, the reality nonetheless arrived, and it has informed this writing a thousand fold, as I learned how to open my heart again, once more into gratitude for simply what is.

It is my hope that these stories will also inform and be useful to you.

How to use this book You can use this book as a daily teaching in your own gratitude practice, or as a source of guidance to use whenever you need it simply by turning to a story at random. You may certainly trust that the Universe will guide you to the exact page you need!

Introduction 3

If you’re using this book as a daily practice, I invite you to be gentle with yourself in your determination. For example, if you forget a day, or even a week or month, don’t worry. Simply come back to the practice when you are ready. It will be still be waiting for you!

Come back when you feel the pull until the secret of gratitude has unlocked in your heart and you can’t imagine any other way to live.

As you journey through this book, I also invite you to connect energetically to the people and situations you’ll read about, inspired by my own life and the experiences of those I’ve connected with in my work. Close your eyes from time to time as you read, and consider all of these souls together, our collective soul gathered in the sharing of the experiences in this book.

The questions at the end of each story are both simple and deep.

Use them to help you go deeper and to make emotional connections to what is truly important in your own life.

Finally, for those who enjoy listening to audio, you will find many of these stories in audio book form at www.sarawiseman.com.

In gratitude, let us begin.

4 Introduction

Part One:

Birth

In which we enter the world as new souls on earth.

1 There is only one entrance

Birth is the only way we enter this world, and death is our only exit.

We all share this truth of human existence—and yet our births and deaths are as individual and unique as each of us.

Imagine!

A new soul, entering the world from the vessel of another body!

A new soul, arriving by Divine choice and by Divine selection of a particular mother, a particular father.

The miracle of welcoming a new soul affects us so deeply, it’s almost impossible to express everything we hold in our heart. Sit down with a group of mothers of any age or stage of childrearing, and the stories will come tumbling out …

“My first child struggled and was delivered by Caesarean. She spent three days in intensive care.”

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“My baby was delivered in two hours, it was the easiest, most beautiful thing I’d ever known.”

“We delivered our youngest on the side of the highway, while racing to the hospital.”

“My fifth child came on a full moon, on the eve of summer solstice.”

“My child arrived with a full head of black hair, which he has kept to this day.”

Each birth, so breathtakingly unique. The baby is born. The baby is cleansed. The baby is swaddled and returned to the mother, and the moment is overwhelmingly beautiful.

This is how we humans enter the world, and it is a miracle.

Most of us don’t remember the moment of our birth—the seconds in which we were pulled from our mother’s warm, sustaining womb into a new life.

Of course, some of us do—in my work as a spiritual teacher and intuitive counselor, I often guide people in past life regressions. Doing this work, I’ve come across a few folks who do indeed recall their gestation, their birth, the weeks and months after birth when they were very new to the world. These people recall holding the very stars in their eyes until those memories gently fade, and by age four or five they have replaced the dazzling energy of the Universe with the more gritty reality of life on earth.

Yet most of us remember nothing of our births, of these early years. We don’t remember the Universe reflected in our eyes. We don’t recall the mystery. Many of us don’t even awaken to the miracle of 8 Part One: Birth

our own humanity until the ages of thirteen, twenty-six, forty-nine, seventy-eight.

When any child is born, however, there is a universal knowing that this is a miracle. We understand with deep recognition that there is now a new soul on earth, and that this innocent new being will surely live, love, struggle, learn, and embark on life’s path with his or her destiny already partly foretold by the time and place in which he or she is born.

Will he succeed? Will she fail? Will he find love? Will she marry?

Will he have life’s passion? Will she have a life’s purpose?

Will he or she find the Divine as a guiding post, so that their hearts may be opened fully, and that each moment may appear as miraculous as the moment of their birth, in which they are born, cleansed, swaddled?

We don’t know.

Life is a mystery.

At the moment of a new soul’s birth, a new entry into this world, we see this clearly: how little we know, how much is mystery—how much is sheer wonder. And at this moment, we revisit again the progression of our own lives, and the miracle it is to have a lifetime at all.

Part One: Birth 9

Close your eyes, and allow yourself to drift into a memory of when you were born, a new soul to the world. You may recall the blanket you had, the room you slept in, a toy. You may be surprised how much you remember!

Think about your birth, and give thanks that you were born, to experience this lifetime.

10  Part One: Birth

2 Mother is the first Beloved

Years ago, I worked with a gifted hypnotherapist. He was a newbie to the craft, just starting out, and I don’t think either he or I understood the scope of his abilities then.

Suffice it to say I went to places and spaces that were far beyond the price of his introductory sessions!

We worked together in the dank basement room of a rental office downtown, the kind of place where folks set up flimsy folding tables and phone banks, then clear out overnight to whereabouts unknown.

It was a way-stop for fly-by-night businesses, filled with all the ghosts of failed dreams, hush and hurry, people in unrest.

My own sessions, however, were deeply productive. I leaned back in a faux leather lounger, closed my eyes, and was transported to amazing places: I saw the Book of Knowledge, a large tome up on a larger table, in which I might turn each page and find yet another picture 11

from my own life, a picture I might look at, and go deeper still. I found the long path of trees, a winding boulevard of sorts, that we are all somehow destined to walk. And during these sessions I also descended in, entered deeper, and ended up in a room I had forgotten for a very long time: the living room of the house I lived in when I was perhaps one or two or three.

I found myself very young—my head did not reach the countertop—in a small, hot kitchen with the radio on, and my mother, visibly pregnant, dancing. We were listening to the radio, the three of us—my mother, me, and my unborn brother in her belly. We danced to the songs of the times, the radio wailing tinny and small.

Everything in the room rushed forth all at once: the speckled, reflective bits of metallic in the kitchen counter top, the thickness of the mug in the sink, the green bottle of Palmolive on the counter, the window opening on to a back hedge, glossy with broad green leaves. My hands were slightly sticky, as if I’d just eaten lunch.

My mother wore capri pants; the kind that were popular back then, in a bold shade of sea green. In my regression, I saw clearly the way her pants ended in the middle of her calf, and I had the overwhelming thought: she was so very young.

And in my session, I began to cry.

She was so very young.

Not yet 30, on this ordinary day in which she danced to the radio, alone in a small kitchen, finishing the dishes from lunch, no one there save her tiny daughter and unborn son.

12 Part One: Birth

Mother is the first Beloved. Whether this is good or bad, it is your soul’s agreement upon entering the world. We choose our parents, for reasons that may be unclear to us in this reality, but that our soul understands and accepts as an absolute necessity for growth and expansion in this lifetime.

Mother is the first Beloved, the earth soul that answers the new soul, or the new soul that answers the earth soul, and it is not always clear which soul is calling which. The child chooses the parent certainly; but on a soul level, the parent must also welcome, or at the very least allow, the child.

Sometimes both souls long for each other with ineffable longing, and it is a mutual calling between mother and child.

Your own mother held you in her womb for nine months; you were created of her body, you ate of her body, you drank of her like some divine feminine version of holy communion. You were sustained by her womb, her breath, her physical self. In this way you were entered into the world.

Sometimes moving in Divine energy of trance and regression reveals something you need to remember about your first Beloved: in this case, it was the hem of the sea green capris that helped me understand how young my mother really was when she raised me, how new as a mother, how undeveloped as a person, how young to have moved away from family to the West Coast. I saw for the first time how she might have felt spending her days alone in a tiny house, filled with hope and fierceness for her new life and her children.

Part One: Birth  13

Mother is the first Beloved; we have known her many times before in the karmic passage of previous lifetimes, and we will know her many times again. She is the person who makes it possible for us to enter the world, whether she is fully evolved or only beginning her journey to consciousness, whether she wanted to welcome us or not.

The first Beloved gazes at us, holds us to her breast. The first Beloved allows us to live in and of her body. The first Beloved is most times no wise, ascended saint or master—just a young woman, unsure and unguided, doing her best to bring a new soul into the world.

Close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Go to a place in your mind or your memory in which you can recall something about your own mother, your first Beloved, when you were very, very young. It may be a special blanket, the way the light falls in a forgotten room, a texture, a color, a smell. Go into this place, and feel everything. Because you were so young, your memory will be two ways: that of a young soul, and that of a soul who has not yet forgotten how to hold the stars in your eyes. Remember it all, and allow yourself to feel gratitude. Learn something new from this exercise about your mother, and hold it in your heart.

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3 Father is the first teacher

My bathing cap is too tight; it doesn’t hold the cascade of hair that someone’s piled on my head in order to squash it on, pull it tight until it covers my ears. When I take it off later, my hair will be sodden, snarled, and the long strands will catch in the cap, causing me to yelp in pain.

I wear it because I want to pretend I am immune from the water: that even when I am submerged, my body will be safe from all that scary wetness.

If we wore goggles back then, I’d have put them on, too. But goggles haven’t been invented yet—at least not for child swimmers like me.

I squint my eyes tightly against the sun, against the stinging chlorine, against the very large dollop of zinc oxide that has been applied to my nose in precaution against sunburn, and allow myself to descend into the whorling wet that awaits.

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It’s summer, I’m at the pool, I’m maybe 4 or 5, and I’m learning to swim.

It’s not an easy surrender.

I gasp, my heart pounds, and I catch sign of myself in reflection: I’m a green-capped alien, the water is dangerously blue, every ripple like a flash of light along the pool’s floor, and I’m hang on to the only safety I know: my father’s arms, my father’s chest, my father’s neck, everything sturdy and comforting, covered with blond curling hair.

If he lets go, I’m sure I’ll die.

If I let go, I’m sure I’ll drown.

I’m learning to swim, he thinks. I’m trying to survive, I’m sure.

My body is rigid with panic, my arms clamped tight around him, and yet we don’t stop. We go deeper: past my knees, past my waist, until I’m up to my neck in water.

And even as we submerge deeper, I hear his voice in my ear: relax, you’re doing fine, it’s okay to let go.

Relax.

You’re doing fine.

It’s okay to let go.

I realize now, many decades later and twelve years after his passing, that these were the only real lessons I ever needed to learn from him.

The father is also a part of the soul circle; of our primary circle.

Many souls are lucky to know our fathers well and long; in this loving relationship, our fathers bestow upon us a trust in the world that

16 Part One: Birth

cannot be taken away. When our father is here, when our father is in the house, all is right with the world.

Others recall different teachings from their fathers. There may be grave difficulties in the relationship: karmic wounds that are beyond forgiving. Still others don’t know of their fathers, or their fathers flit in and out of their lives, undependable at best, heartbreaking at worst.

Sinking back into those long time ago memories, I can see other fathers at the pool now, encouraging, berating, training, teaching, ignoring, punishing, present, authentic, cruel, real, loving, gentle. All those fathers, teaching lessons.

My own father took me continually to deeper depths, letting go of me even as I held on.

Relax.

You’re doing fine.

It’s okay to let go.

These are the soul lessons I’ve been working on, lately, with nary a swim cap in sight, feet fully on dry land. You, as daughters and sons of other fathers, will have your own lessons to learn.

We all receive what we need, even on a summer day in the pool.

Part One: Birth 17

What have you learned, in accepting or rejecting your own father’s teachings?

The male energy moves in all of us, whether we are male or female. It is a part of us, just as everything is a part of us. Take a moment now, and be grateful for what you’ve learned—the lessons your father taught you, and also those lessons he failed to teach. Allow yourself to open your heart to all of it.

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4 Noticing the particulate

At some point you stood there, in the first living room you ever knew, when you were new to the world, and life seemed simple. And you saw it all with new eyes: The old sofa. The worn table. Toys scattered on the floor A big picture window to let the light in.

And at some point, you were playing in this room: maybe it was Saturday and your father napped on the sofa. Maybe it was a weekday, and your mother was in the kitchen. Maybe you were happy; maybe you were sad; maybe you’d been jumping on that old sofa, or making a fort out of the couch pillows.

You were simply being yourself in your body.

And then, in that moment, something shifted.

Perhaps you caught a glimpse of a spirit from the window’s corner, or perhaps something flashed in your eyes, a ray of sunlight glinting in a way you’d never seen before.

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You were so young then: 2, 3, maybe 4.

Everything was still wonderment, but already, you’d started to know pain. Everything was still wonderment, but already, you’d begun to forget.

The stars in your eyes had not completely faded, but they’d become shrouded, so the dazzling deep knowing of the Universe faded to a kind of vision you’d forgotten how to use, a type of seeing that was not useful for earth life.

And yet, with this particular flash of light, it all came back to you: the sun streaming in and illuminating clouds of dust in the air, so that everything in your view were specs and glints and orbs of light, particulate upon particulate, a light-filled energy field.

And you understood once again what you had nearly forgotten, that this is what we are: particulate light, floating in constellations, floating in universes, mixed and melding, always light. This is energy, this is love, this is Divine, this is us. You knew it before you were born. You remembered it again when you were young.

You can remember it today.

As you begin to see this stuff of the Universe with your adult eyes, the visible manifestation of what we call Divine, it is easy to recall more fully who you really are, what we really are: energy, light, love.

It’s all around you, it is you—not just what is seen, but what is also unseen: the energy within the energy, the space within the space, the universes within the Universe.

20 Part One: Birth

Begin to notice the particulate today, even if at first you only glimpse it as physical phenomenon. Today, go to a place where light is streaming. Watch the particulate dance in this stream. See it, wonder at it, wish upon it! It is not just dust mixed with light; it is the essence of everything, as are you. Look in wonder. Give thanks for what you once knew and what you are beginning to remember again.

Part One: Birth  21

5 Becoming the I am

When we first arrive into the world, we’re so blissed out with Oneness, it’s hard to track on anything else. Everything we encounter in those first weeks and months, is all part of One: Mother. Father. Toes.

Fingers.

In wonderment we experience everything as the Universe of us, and we’re in awe. Our toes are a source of amazement: see how they wiggle! All we have to do is think “wiggle” and our toes oblige. Our fingers move, clasp, reach and grasp! All we have to do is desire something, and our fingers grab it!

As we grow older, into toddlerhood and childhood, our body becomes our Universe—our running, stretching, jumping, dancing body—and it’s utter fascination. The sheer joy of moving our bodies fills our waking hours—simply being takes our attention.

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We are perfect Oneness, for those days, weeks, months, and years, until one moment, we experience something that does not feel like One. The world cleaves asunder: we feel pain. We know discomfort.

We experience anxiety. Fear takes over, and in that instant we become unbearably separate.

It’s not just us and our body anymore, living in blissed being. It’s us, our body, and these new and terrible things called fear, panic, anxiety.

It’s the black hole, and at some point in our life—most often when we are very young—we fall down it fast and hard.

Yet interestingly, it’s in this pain, in this myth of separation where we have our first consciousness of being unique. For the first time, standing alone in our crib crying for the person who does not come, or does not come soon enough, we understand that we aren’t just one of One; that there’s more to it.

At this time, the self begins to emerge. For the first time, we see ourselves as separate, and we begin to ask questions such as: Who am I? How am I different? How am I unique?

Many decades later, we will visit our self again at other stages of emergence with new questions: Why am I here? What is my life’s path? What is my life’s purpose?

Sigh. It’s a long road of discovery, and in the end, when we reach our final stop at the end of our lifetime or when we become enlightened—whichever comes first—we see clearly: all of our questions were misguided. Separation is a myth.

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And when we are emerging as our young, separate selves—this is our hero’s path to walk this journey. It’s our rite of passage, as we’re emerging from childhood into adolescence, to have thoughts such as: I’m different. I’m unique. I’m special.

Before we can become adult, before we can become conscious, the self which knows itself as separate must emerge.

We will develop our different, unique and special gifts—or we will neglect them. There are many ways to make this journey.

Our path begins with the first step, but we often have no idea where we’re going until we’ve traveled for a while.

At first we are One. Then the separate self emerges. The journey back to One, whether it takes a few years, decades or a lifetime, is our journey of soul growth.

Consider today your separate self. This is the part of you that makes you unique, special, different—even while you are also One. Think back to your childhood: what were you good at? What were your gifts and talents, the abilities that came easily to you?

Now, consider your unique, special and singular gifts and talents, whether you have used them in this lifetime yet or not. Give thanks for this separate and original self that is you.

Part One: Birth 25

6 The beauty of your true self shines

“Mom, I want to be beautiful,” my daughter said to me one morning from the back seat as we drove to school. She was about five at the time, maybe six.

“You’re beautiful already!” I answered, glancing back in the rearview mirror to see her big eyes, her fresh, round checks.

“No, I want to be really beautiful,” she insisted.

I thought for a moment.

“What kind of beauty do you want?”

“I want the kind that glows.”

I looked at her in the mirror again, but the fresh, round cheeks were tilted away.

“You know, like the kind Naomi has,” her little voice piped again, precise, clear, wanting to be heard.

27

I shifted in the driver’s seat, letting the traffic swoop and flow around me. I pictured Naomi, my daughter’s daycare teacher, in my mind. I saw this young teacher stepping forward to greet the kids the way she did every morning, her arms open in the welcome of a morning hug, her big smile stretching across her face.

“The way Naomi looks,” my daughter repeated.“Like a love look.”

I felt my hands lighten on the wheel, and suddenly I saw Naomi the way my daughter did: the way she laughed in delight when the kids came into school in the morning, how she leaned down and opened her arms to each and every one, a woman so filled with love it emanated from her body, so that every time she moved, walked into a room, turned, something luminous and light streamed out.

Naomi was lit from within.

“Naomi glows,” I said aloud to the back seat with conviction, suddenly getting what my daughter had seen all along.

In the back seat, all soft cheeks and long lashes, my daughter nodded, her head bobbing up and down.

28 Part One: Birth

Who do you know that glows? Close your eyes for a moment, and bring that person into your mind. Now, feel the heart opening and gratitude that you feel when you’re in the presence of such a person. While you’re in this space, also recall the times when you’ve been that person—the person who glows. Thank yourself for this, as well.

Part One: Birth 29

Part Two:

Emergence In which we begin to know the person we will be in this lifetime.